Get Involved: UMC #GivingTuesday Dec. 3 – Matching Funds Double Your Donation!

Have you often wanted to stretch your giving to include one more orphan, one more hungry family, one more youth longing to study? When you make an online donation on December 3, your gift will double! FOR ONE DAY ONLY, on December 3, 2013, as part of UMC #GivingTuesday, gifts made to the SIFAT general fund through Advance #982812 will be matched*. On this day, 200 percent of your gift directly supports our SIFAT ministry.

On December 3 beginning at 12 a.m. EST (remember that’s 11 p.m. Dec. 2 CST), you can donate to the SIFAT General Fund on our Advance #982812 page (see link below). We encourage you to donate early because of the limited availability of matching funds (only $500,000 total for all organizations combined)! Our staff will gladly send you an early reminder or help you in any way we can in making your donation. Email Marie (lanierm@sifat.org) with any questions or with information on how you would like to be contacted for your reminder – phone, e-mail or text!

Here is the website to use to donate. Simply click the large, red GIVE NOW button on the right side of the page.

 http://www.umcmission.org/Give-to-Mission/Search-for-Projects/Projects/982812

Thank you so much for your faithful support to SIFAT and for doubling your impact by making a generous gift on December 3.

Grace and peace,

Tom Corson
Executive Director

*Global Ministries will allocate the “matching funds” dollar for dollar up to the first $500,000 in gifts to all Advance projects combined received online on December 3, 2013, between 12:00 a.m. EST and 11:59 p.m. A maximum of $10,000 per individual gift to a project will be dispersed as matching funds. A project may receive a maximum of $50,000 in matching funds.

This week is going to be busy for our SIFAT staff, but you have several opportunities to get involved. Check out the schedule below to see what’s happening!

Tuesday, 4-6 p.m.: Sarah Corson will be at His Place Christian Resources in Lineville, Ala., for a book signing as part of His Place’s Christmas Open House. For more information, click here.
Wednesday, 6-8 p.m.: Alpha Kappa Lambda and the employees of AU Photo Services are offering Christmas photos in front of Samford Hall on Auburn’s campus. For a $25 donation, you’ll receive two 5×7 photos and a CD with digital copies that you can have reprinted or use for Christmas card photos. For more information, click here.

Sunday, 2 p.m.: Sarah Corson will have a book signing at Wedowee FUMC in Wedowee, Ala. The event will start with Sarah reading an excerpt from Risking Everything. For more information, click here.

*Don’t forget to use igive.com or goodshop.com when you’re shopping online for Cyber Monday deals and Christmas shopping! Both of these sites allow SIFAT to receive a percentage of your total purchase. It’s free money for us, and a way for you to donate without realizing it! See our past posts about iGive and Goodshop to learn more.

On Friday afternoon, our executive director Tom Corson and 2009 graduate Trey Reed were given an opportunity they couldn’t turn down – a chance to leave Thursday, Jan. 21 to travel to Haiti with a group of medical personnel and relief workers from HERO, Haiti Emergency Relief Organization, a nonprofit based in Huntsville. Air travel will not be a problem, because Remote Area Mission – RAM – will be providing a plane and pilot to take the volunteers and their supplies to the Dominican Republic. From there, they will travel across the border and into Haiti. HERO partners with the Jimani Project and Hunstville Haiti Congress, so they have a base camp from which to work.

Tom and Trey will be taking water purifiers from New Life International. These purifiers run from car batteries, which can be recharged using solar panels. The purification system uses electricity and table salt to chlorinate the water, making it safe to drink for up to 10,000 people each day. The systems last for several years, and Tom and Trey will train local people to maintain them.
An individual unit costs $1000. The recommended system costs $2500 and provides a larger capacity of clean drinking water. We need your help now! To donate to our effort to take purification systems to Haiti, please visit the donate page on our website or our cause on Facebook.  Email our accountant Claude, hurttc@sifat.org, to designate your online donation for Haiti. Checks can also be mailed to the SIFAT office, 2944 County Road 113, Lineville, AL 36266.

** As with any disaster relief effort, sometimes plans unexpectedly change. Tom and Trey’s travel is dependent on RAM and HERO at this time. We will keep you updated if the airports close. As of now, they will fly out on Thursday, Jan. 21 .

Another DecembeRadio concert is being held in Mississippi. The proceeds are going to missions, and SIFAT is one of the organizations that will benefit. Other bands performing include God Speed 3, Seven Glory and Sarah Reeves.
When: December 2, 2009 at 6 p.m.

Where: Forrest County Multi Purpose Center Hwy 49 S, Hattiesburg, MS

More information: Click the flier on the left or visit www.forrestcountycenter.com

Did you brave the lines on Black Friday or watch football while enjoying a leftover turkey sandwich? If you decided to wait and find online deals today, your shopping can help SIFAT. Two great sites – iGive.com and Goodshop.com – let you choose stores that will donate a percentage of your purchase to the nonprofit of your choice! Coupons are often available from retailers to help you save on purchases.
So how does this work? Does it take a lot of extra time? Is it confusing? If you are unsure what we are talking about, let’s walk through an example of something our staff does at SIFAT regularly. When we are ready to purchase office supplies, we visit www.goodshop.com, choose SIFAT as our organization to be helped and pick our retailer. The site then forwards us to the retailer’s site. We then order everything as usual. It only takes a few seconds longer and is simple to follow.
iGive.com requires a free membership, but will track your shopping and online searching to let you know how much you have contributed. Visit www.igive.com to start shopping.

Goodshop.com is free and requires no membership. It will not track what you individually have raised, but you can check to see how the cause (SIFAT) is doing. We receive a yearly check for what is raised between September of this year and October of next year. We recently received our ’08-’09 check for almost $90. The more you shop or search, the more we receive! Visit www.goodshop.com for more information.